Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

or

Alzheimer's afflicts millions of people around the world, as well as the family members who care for them. Alzheimer's — Finding the Words: A Communication Guide for Those Who Care offers practical help for both the sufferer and their caregivers by easing paths of communication as the disease progresses. Faltering speech and language processing is often at the root of common behavioral changes that cause conflict; by showing you what to expect and how to work around the changes, this book provides a lifeline that can help make your time together more fulfilling on both sides.

"Finding the words" to communicate with someone who has Alzheimer's is a problem-- especially after many words have lost their meanings to that person. Harriet Hodgson, the daughter of an Alzheimer's patient, has done an excellent job in giving us a guidebook for communicating in the daily struggle all caregivers go through, as she gives us many antidotes from her personal experience with her mother. In this book, we learn about communication at all stages of the disease, the causes of communication problems, and how to "run interference" or "identifying and dealing with the obstacles before they deal with us." We can't fix things; we can't make everything right for the person with Alzheimer's, but we can try to achieve better communication, realizing, as the author says in her epilogue: "It isn't easy for caregivers to find the words they want. Some days we succeed; other days we fall short of our goal. The important thing is that we're trying to improve communication. And that we keep on trying because we care."

I put off reading books on Alzheimer's thinking that my Mother's condition was already depressing enough as it progressed. But I was wrong, I read this book trying to find better ways to act and react with her and it was uplifting to find new keys to her conciousness. She is now in as assited care facility that is wonderful, I see her every day, and have learned new ways to reach her with joy. Thanks Harriet for sharing your pain and knowledge to help others.

This book will probably be helpful to me later, but because it deals more with patients in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease, it's not helpful in my situation. Perhaps the problem is with the description or title of the book as I couldn't tell the content until I'd bought it. I gave it 3 stars because it is probably good for latter-stage patient care-givers.